I wish I had Critical Race Theory in Byrne School back in the 50's

 I started my personal journey in Critical Race Theory (CRT) back in ’63 upon entering University of Chicago in Hyde Park. After 18 years in then all white Garfield Ridge, I quickly realized what educators taught me at Byrne School and Kelly High was the lily white version of the Civil War and its aftermath, Reconstruction.  

 

It was pretty simple. Lincoln freed the slaves and everything thereafter was hunky dory. Except for the Carpetbaggers (white Northerners) and Scalawags (their Southern cohorts, white and black) who tried and failed to overturn noble Southern culture in their failed venture called Reconstruction.    

 

Fifty-eight years after that journey began, I still learn new history which reinforces the current effort to push CRT down into the primary grades. A new book, ‘The Failed Promise’ Robert S. Levine’s history of the Reconstruction era provides much insight that was whitewashed out of my early history lessons.  

 

President Lincoln’s successor Andrew Johnson had one of the most wildly diverging trajectories in U.S. history. He nabbed the 1864 VP nod with Lincoln to balance the ticket as he the only Southern senator to oppose secession. He championed against secession and slavery thruout the state and was nearly assassinated for his efforts. As Governor General of Tennessee during the war, he became a hero to blacks for his pronouncements to end slavery and grant voting to black Union soldiers and landowners. In a famous 1864 speech he called himself the Black Moses in his advocacy of black advancement. Even Radical Republicans viewed him as being more pro-black than Lincoln.  

 

But upon succeeding to the presidency April 15, 1864, a switch was tripped in Johnson’s soul, exposing his lifelong racism. He refused to pursue punishment for secession leaders and sought rebel states Union re-entry without any protections whatsoever for freed slaves. He viewed any such attempt as inevitably leading to race war. Instead, it was Johnson’s obstructionism that allowed the white South to embark on one sided terror against blacks seeking help and their white supporters. Thousands died and 4 million were related to non-slavery peonage in the South.    

 

The Radical Republicans were only called that because they insisted on both citizenship and suffrage for the freed slaves. Terming their efforts ‘radical’ forever discredited them in the eyes of us susceptible school kids taught a largely white version of the era a century later.     

 

Sadly, it was widespread racism thruout the country that aided Johnson’s successful efforts to have black rights and suffrage suppressed. And the wise and prescient writings and speeches of eminent black leader Frederick Douglass were also a casualty of the false narrative we were spoon fed in school as kids. He was largely invisible back then.  

 

Sadly, the words Critical Race Theory may be unfortunate as they're being used to inflame opponents of teaching the full and true history of Reconstruction and our racial history. They're being used like the words ‘Defund the Police’ are to oppose sensible efforts at police reform. But one CRT supporter nailed it in a local paper, “It’s not a theory…it’s history.”